A Belle of the Fifties Memoirs of Mrs. Clay of Alabama, covering social and political life in Washington and the South, 1853-1866. Put into narrative form by Ada Sterling

CHAPTER XI. WAR IS PROCLAIMED.

Chapter 11115 wordsPublic domain

I Go with Senator Clay to Minnesota—“Let’s Mob the Fire-eater”—We See Our First Federal Soldiers at Cairo—Echoes of Sumter—Once More in the Blossomy South—In Picturesque Huntsville—We Hear from Montgomery of President Davis’s Unceasing Industry—A Survey of Huntsville—The “Plebs” and Aristocrats Compete for the Naming of the Town, and the Descendants of a Poet Give Way before Its Discoverer—A Nursing Mother of Alabama’s Great Men—The Fascinations of the Fair Vixens of the Early Nineteenth Century—A Baptism at the Big Spring—The Make-up of Our Army in ’61—We Hear from a Hero at Harper’s Ferry—Letters from Washington—We Prepare to Go to Richmond 153